Office Development with Visual Studio : sample

Using Windows Presentation Foundation and Line-of-Business Data in Microsoft Office Clients (Beth Massi)

VSTO Team — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:24:00 GMT

I mentioned on my blog yesterday that SDN Magazine made an article I wrote back in May available online -- and since it’s all about using WPF & data in a VSTO solution I thought I’d post the link up here too :-)

Using Windows Presentation Foundation and Line-of-Business Data in Microsoft Office Clients

In this article I talk about how to expose Line-of-Business data via ADO.NET Data Services to an Excel client using WPF. Office solutions you build with Visual Studio are designed to work with Windows Forms controls but you can also use WPF controls in your solutions as well. Any UI element that can host Windows Forms controls in an Office solution (VSTO) can also host WPF controls using the Winforms ElementHost as a container.

Using WPF controls in Office allows you to think out of the box and provide world-class data visualizations that are not possible with Windows Forms controls. And you can do it easily in an instantly familiar end-user application like those in the Office family. But what if you don’t have any fancy data visualizations? Even the simplest controls that display data are often better off as WPF controls in Office applications because they better match the UI styles used in the latest versions of Office. Using WPF can make your add-ins look built into the Office applications themselves, providing a better user experience.

This article describes one piece of the Northwind Office Business Application (OBA) sample we created in the beginning of the year so if you’re just getting started in OBA development with Outlook, Word, Excel and Sharepoint I’d suggest reading these as well:

OBA Part 1 - Exposing Line-of-Business Data

OBA Part 2 - Building and Outlook Client against LOB Data

OBA Part 3 - Storing and Reading Data in Word Documents

OBA Part 4 - Building an Excel Client against LOB Data

OBA Part 5 - Building the SharePoint 2007 Workflow

The full sample application, built with Visual Studio 2008, is here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/OBANorthwind

Hmm… I’m thinking a part 6 on deployment of this baby would be a good follow up….

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

VSTO Bug Tracker (Eric Carter, Beth Massi)

VSTO Team — Mon, 18 May 2009 23:16:30 GMT

Eric Carter released a sample and series of articles based on his TechEd demo last week that shows you how to bring bug data from TFS into Excel and Word using VSTO so it can be further analyzed.

If you you went to TechEd but missed the session you can watch it here if you’ve registered:

Advanced Microsoft Office Word and Excel 2007 Development in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 with Visual Studio Tools for Office

Everyone can download the sample here.

And don’t forget to check the VSTO Dev Center often for more news, articles, videos, and samples.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Test Automation Tips: “User Name” dialog after new install of Word (Christin Boyd, Bill Robertson)

VSTO Team — Wed, 06 May 2009 00:12:12 GMT

We have a team of developers who focus entirely on writing test automation programs for the purpose of covering the huge matrix of test cases that Visual Studio requires. We often configure new installs of Office and our automated tests need to deal with the special things that Office products do when you first run them after a new install. For example, when you first run Microsoft Word after a new install, it prompts you to enter your name and initials in a dialog that looks like this:

Our talented SDET’s (Software Development Engineer in Test) use the following function in their automated tests to suppress this dialog:

using System.IO;

using System.Diagnostics;

public static bool AddOffice12UserInfo()

            bool passed = false;

            string[] commands = new string[5];

            commands[0] = @"add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common /v UserData /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f";

            commands[1] = @"add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\Common\UserInfo /v Company /t REG_SZ /d Microsoft /f";

            commands[2] = @"add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\Common\UserInfo /v UserName /t REG_SZ /d TestRun /f";

            commands[3] = @"add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\Common\UserInfo /v UserInitials /t REG_SZ /d t /f";

            commands[4] = @"add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\General /v ShownOptIn /t REG_DWORD /d 00000001 /f";

            for (int i = 0; i < commands.Length; i++)

                bool temp = StartREG(commands[i]);

                if (!temp)

                    return false;

            passed = true;

            return passed;

public static bool StartREG(string arguments)

    bool passed = false;

    int exitcode = -100;

try

        string localpath = Path.Combine(System.Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("SYSTEMROOT"), "system32");

        System.Diagnostics.Process myProcess = new System.Diagnostics.Process();

        myProcess.EnableRaisingEvents = false;

        myProcess.StartInfo.FileName = Path.Combine(localpath, "reg.exe");

        myProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = arguments;

        myProcess.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;

        myProcess.Start();

        myProcess.WaitForExit();

        exitcode = myProcess.ExitCode;

        if (exitcode == 0)

            passed = true;

        else

            Debug.WriteLine("reg exit code is::" + myProcess.ExitCode.ToString());

    catch (Exception ex)

        Debug.Fail(ex.Message, ex.StackTrace);

    return passed;

Let me know if these Test Automation samples are useful and we will try to publish more of these.

-Christin Boyd, Program Manager, Visual Studio and Bill Robertson, Software Development Engineer in Test, Visual Studio

Removing Customization Code Before E-Mailing a Document (Harry Miller)

VSTO Team — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 04:54:00 GMT

When you create a document-level customization for a document, all the copies of the document will be customized too. Even if you save a copy of the document with a different name, when the document is opened it'll try to find and run the code. All the saved data will still be there, it'll just pop up an annoying error message.

In this video I show a couple of ways to remove a customization from a document before you send it to someone.

Resources

ServerDocument.RemoveCustomization Method (2007 System)

ServerDocument.RemoveCustomization Method (2003 System)

ServerDocument Sample

Managing Documents on a Server by Using the ServerDocument Class

Duration: 2 minutes, 19 seconds

<\/embed><\/div>";" galleryimg="no" mce_src="http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/vsto/WindowsLiveWriter/RemovingCustomizationCodeBeforeEMailinga_D075/videoc085cd59ea41.jpg">

MSDN Code Gallery launches Localized Hotfix Pages

VSTO Team — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:03:07 GMT

All of the Visual Studio and .NET Framework hotfixes that are publicly available on MSDN Code Gallery are now localized in the following languages: French, Spanish, Italian, German, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Brazilian Portuguese. You can browse the list of Hotfixes on MSDN CodeGallery here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Project/ProjectDirectory.aspx?TagName=Hotfix. MSDN Code Gallery allows the community to provide feedback on our hotfixes and they can stay informed when a new hotfix is released by subscribing to the following RSS feed: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/rss.ashx?behavior=bytag&TagName=Hotfix. You can customize your RSS feed by adding additional tags, such as “Visual Studio 2008.” The Hotfixes will not necessarily be tagged with “VSTO” if they pertain to Office development because that is not part of the Hotfix taxonomy of tags. The Hotfixes are usually just tagged with the version of Visual Studio or the version of the .NET Framework, and often not tagged with the sub-part of the feature within VS.

Below, we’ve highlighted how the translation options appear in each hotfix resource page. When a community member selects a language, it will take them to a resource page where they can read the localized KB article content and details for the hotfix they’ve selected. The full description of the Hotfix is documented in a Knowledge Base (KB) article on the Help and Support site. The KB article and the Hotfix download pages are cross referenced and circled in red.

Below you can see the same page in Simplified Chinese, with the link to the KB article circled in red:

-Christin Boyd, Program Manager, Visual Studio

WPF in Office Solutions (Harry Miller)

VSTO Team — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:01:56 GMT

A few months ago, Andrew Whitechapel wrote an article and sample application that demonstrates combining the native capabilities of an Office client application with the UI capabilities of WPF. Behind the UI, the application is connected to remote data and services via WCF and uses the RAD features of LINQ to manipulate that data.

Some related questions have come up in the forum recently, so McLean Schofield took the sample application and made a short video overview of the WPF control part. You can find the full explanation and get the code from these articles:

Build Office-Based Solutions Using WPF, WCF, And LINQ - MSDN Magazine article by Andrew Whitechapel

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163292.aspx

Andrew Whitechapel's blog post, which has a link to updated code

http://blogs.msdn.com/andreww/archive/2007/11/26/vsto-wpf-wcf-linq-msdn-article.aspx

Video duration: 4 minutes, 23 seconds

OBA Sample Application Kits Release to Web! (Christin Boyd)

VSTO Team — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:56:00 GMT

If you’re looking for guidance on how to integrate SAP or PeopleSoft into your Office applications, then the OBA Sample Application Kits are a great place to start. An OBA, or Office Business Application, is a composite application that integrates line-of-business systems with Office applications (e.g. Excel or Outlook) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. These kits provide some great documentation and source code to help you get up and running quickly. The kits include:

Source code for an end-to-end OBA
Installation guide
Solution walkthrough
Technical overview document

The kits are a free download and can be found by going to the OBA Sample Application Kits landing page on MSDN:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/cc442491.aspx

Check out the kits and more by visiting the OBA Sample Application Kits site on MSDN today. Also, check out Steve Fox's blog for more information.

-Christin Boyd, Program Manager

Deploying an Office solution using Windows Installer (Mary Lee)

VSTO Team — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:39:00 GMT

Visual Studio 2008 offers a ClickOnce deployment experience for solutions developed for the 2007 Microsoft Office system. However, if you want to deploy additional files, add extra registry keys, or use SMS, you may still be interested in creating a Windows Installer package.

Here are the very basic steps to configure your setup project:

1. Add the release build or publish output of your solution. Then manually add the application and deployment manifests (.dll.manifest and .vsto files).

2. For application-level projects, create the registry keys so that the Microsoft Office application can find your add-in. For more information, see Registry Entries for Application-Level Add-Ins. For the add-in name, use a syntax similar to [CompanyName].[AddinName].

3. For document-level projects, update custom document properties which point to the location of the deployment manifest. If you leave the document in the same relative location compared to the customization assembly, you don't need to update the _AssemblyLocation property. But if you want to move the document to a user's desktop or Documents folders, you'll have to update the _AssemblyLocation property. For more information, see Custom Document Properties Overview.

You must still use ClickOnce security to trust your solution. You can deploy your .msi at this point, but you'll see a trust prompt asking whether the solution should be installed or not. To avoid prompting your end users, sign your manifests with a known and trusted certificate or pre-trust the solution by creating an inclusion list entry. For more information, see Security in Office Solutions (2007 System).

Bonus: there is sample code to help you complete the steps of deploying additional files, updating the document's _AssemblyLocation, and creating an inclusion list entry. Visit http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/VSTO3MSI in the MSDN Code Gallery to download the sample code.

For all the details, read the deployment whitepapers at Deploying a Visual Studio Tools for the Office System 3.0 Solution for the 2007 Microsoft Office System Using Windows Installer (Part 1 of 2) and Deploying a Visual Studio Tools for the Office System 3.0 Solution for the 2007 Microsoft Office System Using Windows Installer (Part 2 of 2).

If you run into trouble implementing this, visit the VSTO MSDN forum at http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/showforum.aspx?forumid=16&siteid=1 to search for answers or ask your questions.

Mary Lee, programming writer.